Day: January 25, 2018

One of our goals in Home Automation has been to buy HomeKit-compatible devices whenever possible for security reasons. I’ve even created an elaborate network setup to isolate non-HomeKit (and Windows) devices from the rest of my gear.

Last year we bought the first HomeKit-compatible webcam, the Omna 180 Cam HD from D-Link. At $150 it wasn’t cheap but buying from a reputable company like D-Link who clearly have been in the business of network gear for ages gave us peace of mind.

The camera hasn’t been a huge success for us for a few reasons. The video isn’t as sharp as we’d expected. It was supposed to be 1080p but it’s pretty fuzzy. It doesn’t store information anywhere but on its own SD card, which might be a plus for some people but for us it limits the usefulness. It gets pretty hot which concerns us, and it is simply offline sometimes and we have to unplug it and plug it in to get it running again.

Tom Merritt, host of the Daily Tech News Show along with many other fine podcasts, joins me to talk about how social media makes us feel. We talk about how we feel about pictures of food, how we curate Twitter, who in our family takes the photos, whether Instagram is a happy place, how we have real-life friends we only know online, how communities are awesome and how sometimes even Facebook is a place to share a deeply personal story. You can find links to all of Tom’s podcasts and his books at tommerritt.com and the Daily Tech News Show at dailytechnewsshow.com.

Allison interviews Thomas Calichiama from Spartan about their innovative radiation-blocking boxer shorts. Spartan boxers shield the wearer’s reproductive organs from wireless radiation while providing comfort. Spartan WaveTech is the same technology used in space suites, incorporating pure silver fibers within the cotton of the fabric to act as a Faraday Cage. They are anti-bacterial, machine washable, and they don’t set off security screening sensors. The setting is CES Unveiled at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas. Learn more at https://spartanunderwear.com/en/home/